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A Walk on the Moon

A Walk on the Moon

List Price: $9.99
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Incredible performances all around
Review: This movie came and went so quickly in theaters that we missed it, but finally saw it on video. What a gem!! The acting is superb from the main characters down to all the extras. Even the little boy is good and believable. Having lived through those times, I relished every detail - the music, the clothing, the hair-dos, the smoking, the little schticks and expressions of the folks at the bungalow colony, the way the Catskills looked back in the 60's, the importance of TV, it didn't miss a thing. Funny, sweet, sad - this movie is a treasure!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One Of The Years Best
Review: Here is a movie with a story told with feeling and alot of heart. A story told that tells us that even as adults, life can be as confusing as a teenager growing up with the same unanswered questions on life. Diane Lane gives an Oscar like performance and truly is one of our most underated actresses. She shows us feeling and makes us care about her character not only with spoken words but also her facial expressions and mannerisms. Anna Paquin does her finest work since her Oscar winning work in The Piano. Memorable scene of Pearl(Lane) and Paquin, confronting each other over her daughter seeing her mother at Woodstock with another man. Outstanding emotional scene. I must say the charaters had me immersed for the whole film. The ending left me uplifted , with a smile on my face, knowing that even when all seems down, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. A similar film like this would be To Jillian on her 37th Birthday. Another family crisis that left me uplifted at the end. Stars Michelle Phiffer and Clair Danes.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Acting and story telling at it's best
Review: It took me several days after seeing this movie, for the first time, to sort out what wasn't said in words, but was expressed in facial expressions, body language and actions . . . sometimes subtle and sometimes stark. I was totally immersed in the characters in this story. A top rate movie that will leave you thinking about choices and values and will, in the end, leave you feeling good about life.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This movie is worthy of Oscar consideration
Review: Diane Lane has been a precious jewel too long ignored by Hollywood, this movie is yet another example of her great work and should be considered by the academy. The beautiful Lane plays her character of Pearl with a genuine fragility and understanding that most actresses of the modern era can't. In the summer of 1969, the whole country is changing, yet Pearl and her husband, played by Liev Schreiber, seem to be standing in mid stream motionless as the currents of those monumental times sweep over them. Pearl got pregnant and married too young and now wishes for the freedom and wonder of her 13 year old daughter, so she begins an affair that at once frees her and plunges her happy marriage into turmoil. The flood of emotion and love emanating from this movie cannot be explained in words.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best movie I've seen in ages
Review: I saw this movie in the theater six times and bought the soundtrack - - my ultimate stamp of approval!

The emotions are heartfelt and speak volumes about the real life struggles between mothers and daughters, within mariages and with one's own self.

The portrait of marriage is the most compelling in that it gives life to something that often goes unsaid... things don't have to be bad, love doesn't have to be lost, for there to be a quiet growing apart and a whispering "what if" eating away at the heart and soul of a relationship.

Likewise, a young mother, and a teenager daughter reflect many of the same emotions - - wondering what lies beyond their safe world, wondering how much they can get away with before they've gone too far - - with the difference being that it is expected of one and shameful for the other.

A sweet exploration of universal feelings and questions. I highly reccommend it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A mature love story; a story about forgiveness
Review: Incredible Oscar-worthy performances by Diane Lane and Liev Schreiber. A "small film" with a whole lot of heart. It's about so many different things; risk and consequence, marriage and promises, unfulfilled potential, sexual awakening, responsibility, and love in its many forms. Lane and Schreiber are so great, even their smallest expressions speak volumes about what they're feeling. Acting at its best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: it will make you fall in love with love
Review: I saw this movie in the theater and left feeling uplifted and satisfied. I loved the music and the characters. The movie really captured a spirit of spontanaeity and freedom. See it!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Diane Lane...chronically unfaithful?
Review: Maybe it's just some quirk of fate that I seem to have watched so many films where Diane Lane was playing basically the same role -- the seemingly happily married housewife who has a hot n' sexy love affair and then returns to her loving and basically decent husband. The most famous of these is obviously "Unfaithful", for which she justifiably won an Oscar. But Ms. Lane had a lot of practice, because she did two nearly identical roles just a couple years before "Unfaithful"...little known indies. One is "Gunshy" where her hottie lover is CSIs William Petersen...the other is this movie, "Walk on the Moon" with LOTRs Viggo Mortensen.

So if you dug Diane Lane in "Unfaithful", here is another shot to see her in basically the same situation and expressing much of the same emotion. What is it about this actress that just screams to casting directors "Cheatin' spouse"? I have no idea...Ms. Lane is a good actress, with a nice look of faded prettiness, like a slightly over the hill cheerleader, and I liked her work in "Unfaithful" very much. But there she was playing a rich waspy housewife...here we are expected to accept her blonde patrician looks as a working class Jewish housewife from 1960s Brooklyn. Sorry, this does not fly. Diane Lane is the antithesis of such a character...she's physically all wrong (the attempt to give her "kinky" wavy dark hair is particularly off base) and she is not Meryl Streep with the accent, so it comes off forced and awkward...she goes in and out of dialect. (She has the same problem in "Gunshy", where she is supposed to be New Jersey mobster's gun moll.)

There is a potentionally interesting story here in the parallel between the mother's sexual awakening with her hippie lover and her 14 year old daughters sexual awakening, but the daughter (the very talented Anna Paquin from "The Piano") and her story are severely short-shifted in order to give maximum screen time to Lane and Mortensen. Viggo Mortensen, who comes off very wooden here although he's awesomely handsome, is basically fulfilling the part of "bimbo boyfriend". (Oh well, it's fair enough when women get so many bimbo roles in the movies.) There is certainly no sign of the Aragorn to come, because he's so vague, unfocused and bland that he basically registers as having no personality...this makes it very clear that he's just a sexy body for Pearl (Lane) to screw.

That leaves Liev Shrieber, the husband, as the sole sympathetic character and he does well with it. The story cuts out early enough that the audience doesn't have to deal with what will certainly be chapter two -- the bitter residue that an affair leaves even when both parties promise to forgive and forget. (And would you want to be Liev Shreber trying to compete with your wife's sexy memories of Viggo Mortensen?)

The background of a Jewish family summer camp in the Catskills is interesting but this was much better done in "Dirty Dancing". The real lame spot in this movie is the attempt to have the mother & lover meet up with the daughter & boyfriend at Woodstock. Actually the whole plot and setting is contrived around this point, i.e., that hippie Woodstock was actually held in the vicinity of these tacky family vacation camps. Obviously being a low budget indie, there is no ability to recreate ANYTHING about the crowds, bands, atmosphere, rain, mud or period ambiance of Woodstock...it would strain the abilities of a big budget film. So it's kinda embarassing to see them even try. It takes whatever credibility we have given the situation and basically blows it. It might have worked better and been cleverer just to have the characters talk about having BEEN at Woodstock, rather than trying to show something so enormous on such a tiny budget.(...)

Utlimately, this comes across as a sort of Lifetime TV movie and I don't mean that in a good sense. There are lots of interesting intentions here that don't work, and a LOT of excruciating dialogue between the characters...the kind that I imagine sends most male viewers to the fridge for a beer. This isn't a movie that your husband or boyfriend will enjoy or even tolerate.

Pretty much just a chance to pant over Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen a couple years before they became big stars and not a whole lot else. A very forgettable and slow paced film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best romantic scene ever!
Review: I never heard of this film until a friend suggested we watch it. I was blown away by the acting but even more blown away by the romantic scene between Pearl and The 'blouse man'. I think the director and actors captured what many women would love to experience for themselves. Simply beautiful and erotic without any sleeze or silliness.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not bad at all...
Review: Goldwyn, with platinum Hollywood credentials courtesy of being the grandson of Samuel Goldwyn (as in Metro-*Goldwyn*-Mayer), is relatively new to the directing business - this is his debut, and he's directed two others since. He is better known as an actor for his roles in *Ghost*, *The Pelican Brief* and *Nixon." In the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon, " Goldwyn played astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon, and perhaps was inspired to base this film, called *A Walk on the Moon*, on unrelated events that occur on that famous night. Goldwyn also seemed to take a good long look at *Dirty Dancing* before he made this film - unarguably a dangerous proposition - but he seemed to be able to determine what parts of it were charming and which parts were schlock. He, thankfully, left most of the schlock on the cutting room floor. Like *Dirty Dancing*, it is the story of a Jewish family spending the summer at a resort in upstate New York. Where *Dirty Dancing* took place in 1963 as the world was just beginning to notice the changes, *Moon* is set in the summer of 1969 and the world's already on fire, but these people don't know it. Diane Lane and Liev Schreiber play Pearl and Marty Kantrowitz, a young blue-collar couple who began having children at a very young age, missing out on their own youth. As their daughter, Alison (Paquin), comes of age, she faces the inevitable gulf that separates her from her parents - it was a requirement that children felt estranged from their parents in 1969 - but her parents simply aren't that much older than she is. Life is pretty dull at the resort, with the highlights being visits from the "Knish Man," the "Ice Cream Man" and the "Blouse Man." Pearl, who finds herself alone during the week while Marty goes back into the city to work, falls hard for the "Blouse Man," a hippie who lives life on his own terms (the movie had the regrettable working title of *Blouse Man*). The entire resort is excited about the impending moonwalk, but Marty won't be able to make it back in time to see it with Pearl. Pearl spends the night in her own world of celestial bodies and shooting stars as she gives herself to the hippie blouse man. Meanwhile, not far away, is this event happening - no one really knows what it's about - it's called "Woodstock." Daughter Alison wants to go, but is forbidden to. She runs away and goes anyway, running into - who else? - her mother who has been taken there by the Blouse Man. Mom inadvertently gets dosed with acid and trips out, and daughter comes unglued over it, screaming, "I'm the teenager! Not you! You're my mom!" The story gets a little messy here and there, as daughter comes to terms with the fact that she may not be quite so different from her parents, and the parents come to terms with the fact that modern life has just about left them in the dust. It is a touching ending as the parents are trying to work it out between them, which seemed somehow unusual - it the Sixties most parents would have split up to "find themselves." It is a refreshing film, nonetheless, with a very good performance from Lane and a number a good performances from lesser-known cast members.


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